


Sicut Aqua, Sicut Vinum

by softiebee



Series: 30 Day Cheesy Trope Challenge [9]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: 30 Day Cheesy Tropes Challenge, Andy! (Ronan's Boy Toy/Fuckbuddy/Casual Friend), Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Party, Underage Drinking, featuring:, pynch - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-11
Updated: 2016-10-11
Packaged: 2018-08-21 19:36:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8257970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softiebee/pseuds/softiebee
Summary: Party time with Ronan (a gay Catholic recluse who enjoys sin) and Adam (an uncomfortable sober bisexual).





	

**Author's Note:**

> from the prompt: ~~memory loss~~ party scene
> 
> this is a work of fiction. all characters belong to maggie steifvater and the raven cycle series.

Ronan is drunk. Adam is not.

He’s leaning against a wall, and everything is washed in blue light. The room is swimming in it; each wall, each drink, even Ronan’s dark skin has taken on a blueish hue. When he exhales, the smoke is blue, too.

Ronan turns to Adam without looking at him. He’s focused on the small roll of paper in his hands - Adam doesn’t see anything in it, but Ronan lights it again anyway and puts it to his lips. He looks up at Adam through his eyelashes, and Adam’s mouth flashes dry. He doesn’t smoke, but watching Ronan do it bites at his lips and turns in his stomach. 

The music changes to something Ronan knows, and he starts to nod his head, cupping his hand over the end of his roll as he does. Adam still isn’t sure what to call it - it’s not a cigarette, and it’s not a joint, either - but when Ronan takes it from his mouth and offers it to Adam, he considers it for a split second before shaking his head. _Considers it_ , just for the brief thought of having a secondhand taste. Adam, who avoids drink and smoke like the plague. 

Jesus.

They’re at a party. Adam isn’t sure whose it is, but Ronan knows, and Adam can tell it’s the kind of party where strangers will pull Ronan into corners and where nobody worries about leaving their drinks unattended. One of those things is good, at least; they had gone to another one that was so dense and violent that Adam had lost sight of Ronan partway through and panicked so much that he had called Gansey in the middle of it all. 

Rule number one of attending parties with Ronan: never call Gansey.

When Adam looks back over, someone tall and light is leaning on the wall next to Ronan. He has a shock of white hair and his hand is playing with Ronan’s sleeve, and then he takes Ronan’s paper from his mouth and puts it in his own. He breathes out, blowing smoke into Ronan’s palm.

Adam can’t speak that language. He feels so foreign here, at all of these parties, that it gets hard to breathe. He looks down, then away, and kicks himself off the wall. 

-

In the kitchen, Adam lifts a blue cup from the stack next to a keg of beer and runs it under the faucet. The people are more dispersed at this party than the last one, he notices - there’s room to breathe and room to step away from anyone getting too close, and no one sneering at him from the countertop. He takes a gulp of water - it tastes like copper, but anything is better than beer, than whiskey, than vodka - and turns, leaning back against the sink.

Ronan is still in the hall. Adam can see him from here if he cranes his neck: he’s just on the other side of the staircase, t-shirt sleeves cuffed just so, leather cords loose around his wrist. It never strikes Adam how short Ronan is until he can see other people over his head. He doesn’t carry himself like a short person, and Adam supposes he’s not, not really. Adam himself is only an inch or two taller than Ronan, and Ronan is taller than most - well, some - people, and definitely taller than Blue, but Adam likes that, if he wanted to, he could pull Ronan right under his arm and he would fit there. And doesn’t like it. Everything about Ronan, Adam likes and doesn’t like. Had there ever been a greyer area that was simultaneously so distinctly black and white?

Adam drains the rest of his water and turns around to run more, considering putting his whole hand, his whole arm, his whole head under the stream. His cup is full. He turns around. Ronan is standing in the doorframe, and Adam almost reaches out to touch the skin under his collar. All of him seems to have soaked in the blue. He’s practically steaming with it. Rule number two of attending parties with Ronan: do not touch.

Ronan looks up at him and juts out his chin, his mouth slack, eyes bright, then slides past him to fill his cup with more beer. “Having fun, Parrish?”

“Sure,” Adam responds. The word falls out of his mouth and stays by his chin. He can feel it there, and it makes the skin prickle on his forearms. If Ronan turned around now, Adam could almost touch his eyelashes…

Ronan is nodding, holding down the plug on the keg. “Good. Good.” He brings the cup to his lips and takes a longer sip than Adam thinks is possible. 

“Are… you?” 

“Sure.” Another year-long drink. When he surfaces, Adam hooks a finger in the rim of the cup and pulls it away, setting it on the counter, and fixes Ronan with a level stare. Ronan pushes his tongue into his cheek and stares back coolly. “I was drinking that.”

“Looked more like you were getting intimate.”

“Jealous?”

Adam shrugs. “Sure.” He has become an expert at navigating situations like this with Ronan, has become skillful with holding an expression like it’s carved in stone. The only color on his cheeks is blue, and he is sure of it. 

Ronan lifts his chin and crosses his arms. “Gonna do anything about it?”

“You have enough boy toys.”

“That so?”

“Mm.”

He reaches for the cup again, and Adam slides it to the other side of the keg. Ronan lets out a breath that’s half sigh and half curse. “So maybe I’m not in the mood for this tonight.”

“In the mood for what?” 

“Fucking Christ- a _party_ , dipshit. Not up for it.”

“Then why are we here?” Adam resists the urge to raise his voice, and instead crams it into a sharp mutter. Parties are Ronan’s, not his. If Ronan didn’t want to be out, they wouldn’t go. Simple.

“Hell if I know. Andy invited me.” Ronan jerks his chin towards the hallway, where the boy with white hair is still leaning against the wall, smoking Ronan’s paper. Adam blows out a breath and brings his hand quickly through his hair. 

“So let’s leave.”

“Nah.” He shifts his weight effortlessly to his heels and examines the cords on his arm, then flicks his gaze up to Adam. _Jesus_. There’s something about Ronan when he looks at Adam like that. Like he’s waiting for the right words to fumble out of Adam’s mouth. 

“So let’s stay.”

“Nah.”

Adam closes his eyes. There’s something about Ronan when he talks to Adam like that. Like he’s pushing him to an edge without knowing how close it is. “So what?”

Ronan’s arm brushes Adam’s hand and his eyes fly open; Ronan’s reached around him and gotten ahold of his beer again. He drinks, and when he sets the cup down again, it’s empty. His smile is sharp. “Explore the house.”

“Doesn’t that count as staying?” Adam asks, but he’s already following Ronan out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Everything in this house is modest money - thick, dark carpeting, big windows, drywall painted gray and cream and washed in the blue of this night. Not like the Ganseys’ house. Not like the Barns. Ronan sticks out here as much as he fits in, and Adam supposes he does, too.

They turn left at the top of the stairs and walk through an office and a study and a bedroom, and Ronan steps up another flight like he knew they were there. It occurs to Adam that maybe he did. Andy looked comfortable with Ronan’s smoke in his mouth. A surprising pull of anger twists in Adam’s throat. 

The staircase is getting narrower and winding up over Adam’s head. He falls behind Ronan and looks up, craning his neck to see the landing, and finds it far above. At least from back here, he can watch Ronan unguarded. His eyes land on the curve of Ronan’s ear, the tension in his shoulders, the wrinkles and shadows scattered into his shirt, and he swallows hard, forcing himself to look away. That’s the problem with being able to look at Ronan - it’s like scrying alone with no one to pull him out. 

Ronan stops suddenly, and Adam almost runs into him. He’s fiddling with the knob of an old white door until it pops and swings open, and he steps inside like he’s done it a thousand times. Adam steps after him. Goosebumps are already forming on Adam’s arms; it’s cold, and the windows are open. The room is bare. All the noise and the blue of the party below are muffled and thin, and when Adam looks to Ronan, he’s out on the roof, washed in silver.

He watches him for a minute, then crawls awkwardly out the window and sits next to him. The shingles are icy. Adam is too aware of Ronan’s arm next to his, of the warmth radiating from him. Ronan shifts, and his skin brushes Adam’s wrist, and Adam’s breath hitches. He doesn’t move.

The last time he saw Ronan like this, he was asleep on the floor of St. Agnes. The light fell in the same way, but the silence was different. Softer. Rounded at the edges. This silence is so full, Adam almost feels like there isn’t room to breathe. Ronan’s eyes are heavy on his neck. He’s shivering.

“It’s fucking freezing.”

“Here.” Ronan shifts closer, and his entire side is suddenly pressed against Adam, and Adam is paralyzed. “Better?”

Adam nods his head slowly, then shakes it. Ronan is so close, a breath from Adam’s face, maybe less. He could prop his chin on Ronan’s shoulder. “No, I’m… I’m still a bit…”

Ronan lets out a long breath, and Adam barely has time to watch it turn to frost in the air before Ronan’s mouth is on his, pressing into him, and Adam is nowhere and everywhere all at once. He can taste the cold on Ronan’s mouth, and the smoke and the beer and the blue, and he wonders, fleetingly, if this is what Andy tasted when he kissed Ronan. If this is what Kavinsky tasted. Ronan’s hands cup his face and he’s distracted from thought by the iciness of Ronan’s fingers on his skin, and where they press, just so, to make Adam gasp into Ronan’s mouth. 

“Keep your cool there, Parrish,” Ronan murmurs, and presses his half-smile into Adam’s jaw, behind his ear, down his neck. All of Adam’s breaths are short now, pulled from his lungs by the crisp winter and by Ronan’s lips at his collarbone. He bites down, and Adam chokes in a groan. He’ll have bruises there tomorrow, he can feel it, but for once the prospect of a bruise seems more like a medal of honor than a badge of shame.

They stay on the roof until the cold chaps their mouths and hands, but the night does not let them go for a long while.

**Author's Note:**

> this is the swap!! it might be a little bit of cheating because it's something i was already working on (shameful, i know) but i needed extra time to study and work today, so it was a good break.  
> in other news, i was checking over the list -- which, by the way, needs some editing, but i'll get to that later -- and i realized that tomorrow's prompt (online relationship) would go against my own personal needs for this particular pairing, e.g. ronan's *canon* hopeless and unrepentant aversion to all things technology. so instead of doing that, i'll do what was meant to be today's prompt: memory loss.  
> again (and again and again and again) thank you so much to those of you who take the time to keep up with this series. i love you all.
> 
> i'd love you forever if you left me comments/kudos!! you can find me on tumblr at [c-beswater](http://c-beswater.tumblr.com/).


End file.
